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As much as we know about drugs and how easily they’re accessible to the people who want them, we collectively try to normalize them much more than we should, really. John Swab’s King Ivory is a raw and unflinching take at the fentanyl epidemic tearing through the U.S., exposing not just the human toll but the corrupt system that enables it. With sharp action sequences and a surprising depth of emotional intelligence, the world in King Ivory feels disturbingly close to our own. Will Stone’s seamless cinematography, especially the handheld camera movements, grounds the chaos with a sense of realism that holds the film together. And for once, the cops are actually humanized. They’re not painted as the usual menace; they’re relatable, even likable. Excuse me?

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What happens in the movie?

Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this gritty crime thriller follows two old-school,...

Exclusive: Michael Mando (Better Call Saul) has signed with Underground for representation in all areas.

The Canadian-born actor is known for starring as Abq cartel member Nacho Varga on the international hit Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul, which garnered 53 Emmy nominations over the course of its six seasons. He is also known for co-creating and performing the character of Vaas Montenegro in the Far Cry video game, a role he later reprised opposite Christopher Mintz-Plasse in miniseries The Far Cry Experience.

Currently, Mando is wrapping up 72 Hours, a new comedy for Netflix headlined by Kevin Hart. He will next be seen as one of the leads in King Ivory, an action thriller which opened at the Venice Film Festival, as well as in Amazon’s series Criminal, where he stars alongside Charlie Hunnam, Richard Jenkins, Adria Arjona and Emilia Clarke.

Mando first broke into television overseas with acclaimed...

Jack Reacher has been spotted out and about in the real-world in our first look at the upcoming Reacher spin-off, Neagley. The action series has proven to be a massive hit for Amazon Prime Video, with the studio and streamer now looking to branch out into a Reacher shared universe, starting with Neagley starring Maria Sten as Frances Neagley. And Amazon is wasting no time in getting the spin-off to screens.

While it had not been confirmed that Alan Ritchson’s Jack Reacher would appear alongside Sten’s Neagley in the spin-off series, it has now been revealed that he absolutely will, with the pair spotting filming scenes for the show during a recent face-off between the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox at Chicago's Wrigley Field (via MLB). While the images and footage don’t give much away, Ritchson is sporting his usual stoic expression which gives way...

Ben Foster, who was nominated for an Emmy for The Survivor a few years back, is headed back to the big screen with an upcoming action thriller that has finally secured a release date. After getting rave reviews last year during a brief festival run, King Ivory has set its sights on a 2025 release date window.

Variety reports that King Ivory, led by Hell or High Water star Ben Foster as well as Melissa Leo, has finally found theatrical distribution in the United States after premiering at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. King Ivory was directed by John Swab (Candy Land), based on his own screenplay. The movie tackles the fentanyl crisis "based on extensive research with law enforcement, gangs, inmates, migrants, and addicts." Check out the synopsis below:

"Based on extensive research involving law enforcement and gang members, a never-before-seen, authentic look inside the underworld of fentanyl trafficking from gangs...

Action-thriller “King Ivory, which had its world premiere at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, is set to get a theatrical release in the U.S.

Saban Films has acquired North American rights to the film — written and directed by John Swab and starring Ben Foster and Melissa Leo — and teamed with Roadside Attractions for a national theatrical release later in 2025. Universal Pictures will handle all other territories.

Also starring James Badge Dale (“The Departed”), Michael Mando (“Better Call Saul”), Rory Cochrane (“Black Mass”), Ritchie Coster (“The Dark Knight”), George Carroll (“The Town”), Sam Quartin “(Candy Land”), newcomer Jasper Jones and Oscar nominee Graham Greene (“Dances with Wolves”), “King Ivory” is described as a “fentanyl expose” based on extensive research with law enforcement, gangs, inmates, migrants and addicts.

The film was produced by Jeremy Rosen for his Oklahoma-based Roxwell Films.

Set against the backdrop of the opioid epidemic as fentanyl floods the market,...

One of Frank Grillo’s more recent projects that perhaps didn’t get the theatrical release it deserved has found success on a new streamer. Grillo stars opposite Andy Garcia and Josh Hutcherson in Long Gone Heroes, the crime thriller following a special forces soldier who has given up everything but now must return to the field to track down his niece. The film recently began streaming on Paramount+ and has wasted no time becoming a major streaming hit, sitting at #2 at the time of writing, behind only Gladiator 2. Long Gone Heroes did not report any box office earnings, nor has it earned enough scores on Rotten Tomatoes to be rendered a review, but it's still wowing audiences on Paramount+ as one of the streamer’s most popular movies.

John Swab wrote and directed Long Gone Heroes with a story from Santiago Manes Moreno. Swab first made his feature...

John Swab’s new crime thriller King Ivory seeks to shine a light on the very real human toll of America’s ongoing opioid crisis. Based on extensive research, including interviews with those on the frontlines and those suffering personal battles, Swab crafts a brutally honest portrait of how this public health calamity has ravaged communities across the country.

We meet Tulsa police officer James Badge Dale, who is determined to take down the dealers flooding his city with deadly fentanyl. But in a twist known all too well these days, his own teenage son becomes hooked, showing how easily even the most cautious families can fall victim.

Beyond the police procedure and gritty action scenes, King Ivory aims to put faces to the statistics. We witness the human consequences of an epidemic that claims over 100,000 lives each year. Swab ensures we experience the story from all perspectives—from the...

The team behind opioid crime thriller “King Ivory” had a somewhat unorthodox journey to the Venice Film Festival this year.

When a delayed flight from New York meant they missed their connection by a matter of minutes, the group of six — including stars Ben Foster and Melissa Leo, plus producer Jeremy Rosen and writer/director John Swab — found themselves in Munich on a long waitlist for the only other plane going to Venice that day.

Thinking that the chances of them all getting seats were fairly slim, Rosen made what he describes as an “executive decision,” hiring a Mercedes Sprinter van for a seven-hour drive that took them from Germany into Italy through the Austrian Alps.

“It was truly like a camp trip… a camp trip for privileged children,” he notes. There was also a hint of danger — Swab claims that about halfway into the ride, he spotted Rosen “falling asleep at the wheel.

Amiable Josh seems on the surface to have the perfect life: accomplished wife (Cobie Smulders), son (William Kosovic) and a new house. Problem is, fatal car accidents happen with some frequency — and quite graphically — in Josh’s front yard, breaking apart his thin veneer of a life. Jason Buxton’s “Sharp Corner” stars Ben Foster as the almost anonymous Josh, the human equivalent of khakis and a white button-down shirt. Buxton imbues the film with tension, and as the likable Foster takes John into increasingly obsessive behavior, the film finds more horror movie elements in the banality of the normal. Foster is busy — he was in Venice to support John Swab’s “King Ivory,” which unspooled in the Horizons Extra section — and calls “King Ivory” “an exploration of import export of fentanyl and the cost of that.”

“Sharp Corner” world premieres Sept. 6 at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival. Neon Intl.

It was Adolf Hitler’s name that became synonymous with evil, but his Italian counterpart — Benito Mussolini, named for a Mexican revolutionary leader by his staunchly Socialist father — was arguably the more enduring brand. Any populist politician today owes a good deal to the Mussolini playbook, brought to explosive life in an extraordinary Italian-language series by British director Joe Wright.

M. Son of the Century sticks to the facts of the great dictator’s life, which are extraordinary enough, but stretches those facts into surreal shapes until we feel we’re in some parallel historical universe. Wright’s brassy style — unlike anything he has done before — owes something to Fellini, but a whole lot more to its subject. Because Benito Mussolini, apart from anything else, definitely knew how to put on a show.

Related: Director Of ‘Russians At War’ Doc Bats Back Suggestions Of Whitewashing: “We Have To Humanize Everyone.

It’s Joker: Folie à Deux day here on the Lido, with director Todd Phillips and stars Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in town for the world premiere of Warner Bros/DC’s crime drama with musical flourishes. Before that, Philipps, Joker Best Actor Oscar winner Phoenix, and Gaga fielded questions from the press who had attended a packed show this morning.

The trio were in a playful mood, particularly Phoenix, who repeatedly turned down the invitation to answer questions. Joker: Folie À Deux is Phillips’ return to the Lido after clinching the festival Golden Lion with the first film in 2019.

Related: Daniel Craig On Intimacy, Fulfillment & Accessibility Of Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Queer’ – Venice Film Festival

Phillips said this morning that it feels “right and correct” to be in Venice with the sequel.

“It felt like the logical launching point for this second film. We have a very strong feeling...

James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli was one of the guests at a gala dinner hosted by the Doha Film Institute (Dfi) and the Media City Qatar (McQ) on the fringes of the Venice Film Festival on Monday evening.

The veteran producer’s presence added fuel to recent reports that she is attempting to secure Qatari finance for ex-James Bond actor Daniel Craig’s big screen passion project Othello, with well-placed sources hinting on Monday night that talks were ongoing.

Related: ‘Russians At War’ Teaser: Anastasia Trofimova’s Doc Gives Rare Insight Into Life Of Russian Soldiers On The Frontline In Ukraine – Venice

Broccoli — who is co-head of James Bond producer Eon Productions with Michael G. Wilson — has reportedly been working with Craig for some time on the project, billed as a modern adaptation of the Shakespearean classic set in American army barracks in Iraq.

Related: ‘King Ivory’: Melissa Leo,...

Indie filmmaker John Swab’s action thriller King Ivory, a multi-faceted dive into the U.S. fentanyl crisis that weaves together storylines from various angles of the war on drugs, had its world premiere in the Horizons Extra strand at the Venice Film Festival this week. Much of the main cast was on hand to reunite on the Lido after having shot the movie under an interim agreement last year in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The story follows Tulsa drug cop, Layne West (James Badge Dale), who is battling the local criminal element, which hits too close to home when his son gets hooked on fentanyl. West makes it his mission to take down those responsible, including the Mexican cartel’s local shot-caller, Ramón Garza (Michael Mando), Indian Brotherhood War Chief, Holt Lightfeather (Graham Greene), who controls state-wide trafficking while serving life inside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester and the local Irish Mob family outfit,...

The shadow of Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 drug war epic, Traffic, hangs heavily over all the narcs, cartel members, native gangsters and fentanyl addicts populating director John Swab’s hard-nosed thriller, King Ivory. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Taking cues from a modern classic that depicted the battle to stop crack-cocaine from destroying America, Swab repeats the same structure over two decades later to tackle the opioid epidemic, and generally achieves strong results. Less dramatic and poetic than the Soderbergh film, King Ivory nonetheless boasts some harrowingly real action sequences, tough-as-nails characters and an overall level of grittiness that demands attention. Its uncompromisingly bleak view of fentanyl’s damaging hold on the U.S. is not necessarily a crowd-pleaser, but it well deserves a look.

Swab cut his chops directing genre flicks like Ida Red and Candy Land, putting out a whopping seven features since 2019. (He’s already releasing another movie,...

Tense, taut, and deeply gripping writer/director John Swab’s dramatic drug cartel/fentanyl trade crime thriller “King Ivory” is a terrific surprise from the Venice Film Festival’s Orrizonti Extras section. Reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh’s Academy Award-winning drug trafficking thriller, “Traffic,” though rougher and slightly more condensed in scope, “King Ivory”— one of the many street slang monikers for fentanyl— centers on the ongoing war on drugs, the way it affects many different communities and lives, and the hard reality struggle to make even a tiny dent in this conflict.

Continue reading ‘King Ivory’ Review: James Badge Dale Leads A Searing, ‘Traffic’-Esque Drug Cartel Crime Thriller [Venice] at The Playlist.

Exclusive: James Badge Dale is set for a major recurring role in Apple TV+limited series The Savant, starring and executive produced by Jessica Chastain. Nnamdi Asomugha also stars in the eight-episode series from writer/executive producer/showrunner Melissa James Gibson, Fifth Season and Anonymous Content.

The Savant is inspired by a true story published by Cosmopolitan, which was written by Andrea Stanley. The storyline and character details are being kept under wraps.

Chastain plays a top-secret investigator known as the Savant, who infiltrates online hate groups to take down the most violent men in the country. Asomugha plays her husband.

Chastain and Kelly Carmichael exec produce through her Freckle Films banner. James Gibson exec produces, with Matthew Heineman directing and exec producing. Jessica Giles, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, executive produces, and Brian Madden, SVP Development for Hearst Magazines, produces. Stanley serves as consultant.

Dale recently wrapped back-to-back lead roles in two indie features,...

As Hollywood waits to see what may come out of Friday’s meeting between the WGA and the AMPTP, filmmakers and producers at all levels have been engaged in a complex dialogue on the lightning-rod topic that has emerged during the concurrent actors strike: the SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement.

As of Tuesday, a total of 123 interim agreements have been handed out in both film and TV since the guild’s strike began, to projects from “truly independent producers” that have agreed to abide by the terms of the new contract SAG-AFTRA is pushing for with the studios and streamers.

The topic of the interim agreements, which are being studied and handed out by a group within the actors union, are being discussed, dissected and debated on the picket lines and social media, with actors such as Sarah Silverman voicing their concern that such a policy could prolong the strike.

Exclusive: After being forced to halt production with the launch of the SAG-AFTRA strike, the crime drama King Ivory from writer-director John Swab (Ida Red) is back up and running once again, in and around Tulsa, Ok, having been named just recently as one of 39 productions that will benefit from a SAG Interim Agreement.

Previously unannounced actors who have been able to return to set, pursuant to the agreement, include James Badge Dale (The Departed), Ben Foster (Hell or High Water), Michael Mando (Better Call Saul), Rory Cochrane (Black Mass), Ritchie Coster (The Dark Knight), George Carroll (The Town), Sam Quartin (Candy Land), Academy Award nominee Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves) and Academy Award winner Melissa Leo (The Fighter).

While production on the majority of studio projects has been shuttered, amidst a dual strike by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, the actors guild is offering interim agreements to the projects of “truly independent producers,...